Exhibition Giotto e Compagni

Praised by his contemporaries Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, admired by Leonardo da Vinci, and copied by Michelangelo, Giotto di Bondone (c. 1267–1337) has been seen down the centuries as the instigator of a painting revolution without precedent since ancient times.

This radical change was not merely stylistic: its explanation also lies in a new attitude to the perceptible world, a world Giotto set out to render in all its diversity and three-dimensional reality.

The itinerant career that took the artist from Florence, where he mostly worked, to Milan—but also to Assisi, Rimini, Padua, Rome, Naples, and perhaps even Avignon—unleashed a veritable shock wave throughout Italy and, later, in Europe. Such was his reputation, and so numerous were his commissions, that from 1290 onwards he worked with assistants, known as compagni. Some of them followed him in the course of his travels, while certain local recruits—in Naples for example—would stay on after his departure and play their part in the development of independent artistic breeding grounds.

In thirty works—paintings, drawings, illuminations, and sculptures—mostly from French collections but also from abroad, the exhibition highlights Giotto's inventions while at the same time addressing such questions as the (notably Franciscan) networks that made his works known, the organization of his workshop (or workshops), and the typology of his painted panels—all matters on which extensive recent research has shed new light.

Organized by:

Dominique Thiébaut, Department of Paintings, Musée du Louvre.

Practical information

From April 18 to July 15, 2013

Location
Salle de la Chapelle

Opening hours
Open every day (except Tuesday) from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Night opening until 9:45 p.m. on Wednesdays and Fridays